Customer Reviews

Dispatches from the Cold

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read Leonard Chang's first novel, The Fruit 'N Food, and thought it was okay. But this one is so sophisticated and interesting. I'm really curious to see what he does next.

Reminded me a little of the films of Paul Schrader, with the disaffected, alienated, and angry man brooding at the world. The spin on this novel was the letters and the outside narrator. Well-written, and interesting, but kind of a downer.

This novel begins with the former biology teacher reading letters meant for a previous tenant, and soon envisions the life of the intended recipient. It's an ingenuous new angle on the epistolary novel, and this device shows us the strange possibilities of narration and storytelling. The main character, Gorden, is odious but compelling, and you watch him with a voyeuristic fascination as he slowly unravels. The narrator/writer, the other part of the story, comments and describes his own life that's an interesting counterbalance to Gorden's deteriorating life. A smart and fascinating book.

I immediately thought of Russell Banks when the subject of the novel turned to a working-class guy in New Hampshire, but Chang takes the story in an interesting direction: the Korean American experience clashing against white, rural America. There are actually two narratives here, one about a young man on Long Island, and another about a sporting goods clerk named Farrel Gorden, who hates his new Asian American boss. I liked how these stories mix and play off one another, and the writing is superb--complex, lyrical, winding. This is a complicated and rewarding novel to read.

The cover says it all. A man spiraling out of control. The book weaves together some of the major issues of our time in a story about relatively simple people: race, hate, adultery, revenge, ambition, and the ravages of lost dreams. Leonard Chang describes the characters as if there's a microscope upon them, until you can tell what they're feeling through his subtle descriptions. An altogether excellent book by an up and coming writer.

Finally we get an Asian American writer who doesn't just write about race or ethnicity. Am I the only one getting tired of all that "woe is me" ethnic angst? This guy is writing some good fiction. Not "ethnic fiction" but GOOD fiction.